Just wondering out here, cause Im really torn between these two. With Spotify family and Apple One I use both alternately and in both Im missing some parts that the other one have.
for Apple Music I mostly lack good new songs suggestion algorithm, because it very often just plays me a song that I would never ever listen to - and that's based on "continue playing" from current playlist.
for Spotify I lack Losseless and Spatialise.
in terms of UI, both are somewhat not great
Apple Music is cumbersome and hard to navigate to song that is currently playing.
Spotify is just too much noise on the screen for me
not linked to Apple ecosystem (which I don't use at all). not part of any of the other big corps (Google, Amazon) trying get full control of our digital life.
properly multi-platform. has a Linux client
cheap enough, no ads. advertise
great family plan, the best of all subscription services I have seen. Single payment, but each family member has their own separate account with their own password, not just a profile like on Netflix
most of the music I care about is available there
great remote control between different Spotify apps and devices. When I start Spotify on my Linux box I can control it with my Android phone, just like that
pretty much all of this. i bought into a family plan of spotify premium back in maybe 2016 and haven't looked back.
audio quality is fantastic. arguably only tidal has a higher bitrate for their premium plans, but it's so negligible unless you're really deep into audiophile territory. discover weekly is actually really good if you carefully curate your playlists and has led me to many new artists. while i don't have personal experience with other platforms underground music, spotify has a shockingly large number of small time artists that i absolutely love.
The Discover Weekly playlist is far from perfect – it would often give me the same songs again and again or multiple covers of single song. But still, good enough for everyday use. And I like for alternative/indie/niche music too, so Spotify Discover Weekly is much better than most audio stations or existing playlists.
Yeah, it's definitely not perfect, but years of crafting my existing playlists has led to a pretty solid foundation for discovery to work with. I'll get something I've heard before maybe once a month these days, but this is after basically 7 years of listening almost weekly.